Part of My Story

I was normal once, until it all went wrong. When I was 8 years old, I stopped eating food at school because I didn't like the school lunches. The school lunches were frozen and microwave food that tasted disgusting, and my parents were poor then and couldn't afford to buy me lunch. I messed up my stomach and kept vomiting and developed acidic reflux disease from then on. During the end of sophomore year in high school, I had a nervous breakdown. I was naive at the time and drank a lot of soda without knowing that it would aggravate my acid reflux. Mentally, the nervous breakdown was induced by the stress and pressure my parents put on me. At age 15, my parents placed pressure on me to learn how to drive, learn how to swim, volunteer or get a job, look to apply into a good college (Berkeley or Stanford). Physically, I went on another bout of vomiting and my stomach got really messed up. In turn, I developed an anxiety disorder and depression. Because of my traumatic experiences with vomiting, I developed emetophobia, the fear of vomiting, especially in public situations. I was anorexic and bulimic, but not because of body image or choice. Graduating high school was extremely hard and I was barely able to get through it. Then came college, where I've heard others say college is very challenging and tough to graduate from. For me, with my disorders and illnesses, college was a grind and hundred times harder. My parents and my brother continued to place pressure on me to graduate college. I was one semester away from graduating, but I had to drop out because I was suicidal. My acid reflux got worse and I was experiencing chest pains. Effort-wise, I give it 100%, anything less and I would be dead.